Dinesh D'Souza: Erase Woodrow Wilson while you are at it

Author Dinesh D’Souza has been making the rounds to promote his new book “The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left”, while also addressing recent attacks by Leftist social justice groups to erase monuments.

D’Souza told Breitbart radio that the ties to racism go deep into the fabric of the Democratic Party. He noted that one of the Democrats’ most-celebrated personalities is Woodrow Wilson, the first Southerner elected to the presidency after the Civil War. Besides overseeing negotiations over the Allied victory over Germany and the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires, Wilson also brought in a focus on race that has been typical of Democrats. He also reinstituted Jim Crow laws in Washington DC.

Wilson was known for saying, “There are no government positions for Negroes in the South. A Negro’s place is in the corn field.”

D’Souza said, “Woodrow Wilson is almost single-handedly responsible for the revival of the Ku Klux Klan.” Republicans, he said, had nearly eliminated the Ku Klux Klan before Wilson came to power. He went on, “For several years there was no Ku Klux Klan and then Woodrow Wilson in the early 20th century screened a pro-KKK movie in the White House and it instigated a Klan revival. The Klan even spread to states where it wasn’t there previously, states outside the South.”

D’Souza was referring to “Birth of a Nation”, a silent movie that depicted the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as defenders of Southern values in the wake of the Civil War. As to the notion that memorials to Confederates, or slaveowners such as George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, should be erased, D’Souza said, “So, if anyone is going to be going on pulling down statues, Woodrow Wilson is a pretty good candidate to have his statue pulled down."